Non Linux User Question: (closest to) Standard Video Format on Linux
 

Hello, I'd like to know what would be the best video filetype for Linux users to put on a website. I know there is no official standard video format but there has to be one most used format or codec.

I want to put up videos in two formats, Quicktime for Mac OS X and one format for both Windows and Linux. At the moment I'm thinking about Flash, WMV and MPG, maybe MPEG4.

What would you recommend? What do most Linux users have installed or what would force the least Linux users to install anything new to see my videos?

Thanks a lot!

MPEG or AVI would be easiest for most Linux users to view. Quicktime is as viewable on Linux as WMV once the codecs are installed, and Quicktime offers better quality than WMV. For ubiquity, Flash is probably best, even though it is proprietary. But if you want the videos to be downloadable, one of the other formats would be best.

Any of these formats is viewable on any system. All it takes is the proper software. Linux users are used to installing additional codecs and software to view content intended for other systems, for the most part. I maintain some sites for someone who uses Macs and hates Microsoft. He produces videos only in Quicktime format. I simply place instructions on the site for Windows and Linux users to tell them how to view the content.

Yeah, any format will work, but the more common ones are better to use in case some codecs are not available. However, I would stay away from WMV because mplayer and ffmpeg have trouble decoding it, and it's a POS format anyway. So flv, mp4, avi, all should work fine, you can try ogg theora as well, as it is an open video codec. Also note that there is a difference between format and codec, however in some cases a format only supports a small number of codecs, with some notable exceptions (mkv, which is an open format also).

Thanks!
 

I think I'll go for MP4 then, it should work on all 3 platforms. With H.264.